AS the new year begins we all turn to the Guardian for advice on coping with the stresses and strains of modern life. Here are their tips to make you feel good, all the time, about everything.
Throw your alarm clock in the koi carp pond
Why get up at seven in the morning like all those pitiful rodents in the rat race? Sleep in until 11 for maximum spiritual replenishment, then ease yourself gently into the day with a hibiscus tea and a meditation session. It’s a mystery why more people don’t do this.
Get in a little man to do your odd jobs
Skylight in your study stuck? Door to your walk-in pantry come off its hinges? Don’t waste valuable time hunting for a screwdriver when you could be fretting about the disadvantaged. Get in a little man – or better still, a little woman – to do it for you. They’re remarkably cheap and their desperate gratitude for any paid work will give you the lift you need to beat the January Blues.
Winter in Sri Lanka for four weeks instead of two
The effects of the British winter are corrosive for sensitive souls like you who constantly worry about climate change. So why not jet out to your favourite resort for an extended break on the other side of the world where hotels are quaintly cheap and the locals charmingly obsequious?
Buy that sports car – you’re only 45 once!
You could have been a poet but the capitalist system forced you to go into banking instead. So go on – ditch the wanky folding bicycle for your morning commute and buy that vintage Lotus Elan you always craved. Show your soulless capitalist bosses your spiritual side.
Convert your disused barn into a swimming pool and squash court
We’ve all stared out of our kitchen windows wondering what to do with the derelict barn you inherited when you swapped your job in London for a rural Cotswolds idyll. Well don’t just think, act! For the price of a coffee shop you could convert it into your own private sports centre, with all the scientifically proven health benefits that brings.
Organise a workers’ uprising
Not a real one, of course! More something along the lines of a civil war reenactment, using local volunteers to play the roles of Russian proletarians overthrowing their imperial tyrants. ‘Living history’ projects like this are not only educational – they provide the disadvantaged with a way of using up energy that might otherwise go into vandalising your Volvo in the Waitrose car park.
